Alex Ovechkin is closing on in 600 goals. He will become just the 20th player in NHL history to reach this milestone … and there’s a case to be made that he might just be the greatest goal-scorer in NHL history. If not the greatest, he’s certainly one of the greatest.

Ovechkin, at age 32, is under contract for three more seasons. Though he’ll have earned $124 million by then under the 13-year deal he signed in 2008, at age 35, he’ll likely choose to stick around for a few more years. Will he be able to score the nearly 300 goals needed to surpass Wayne Gretzky’s career record of 894 goals? Not very likely! But still…

The top 20 scorers in NHL history … through games played yesterday.

There are a lot more skillful number-crunchers out there than me. I know there are those who can work the numbers to better reflect how relatively “easy” or “hard” it has been to score goals in the NHL in different eras. For me, I rely mainly on what I see. Yes, of course, the game is faster now than its ever been (but hockey has always been as fast as it could be). Still, one need only to look at how few players reach 50 goal or 100 points these days to know that scoring is at a premium in the current NHL.

So here’s the thing about Ovechkin. Virtually everyone who’s above him on the all-time scoring list played the majority of their careers in an era when goals were a lot more plentiful than they are now. The game was a lot more wide open and goalies were not as well-coached or well protected. Of the players ahead of Ovechkin, only Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull played the bulk of their NHL careers at a time when goals were as hard to come by as they’ve been for most of Ovechkin’s career.

In my less-than-scientific approach, I would offer that Ovechkin and Bobby Hull may just be the greatest scorers of all time. And their numbers are remarkably similar. Currently, Ovechkin leads the NHL with 40 goals this seaon. If he holds on (Winnipeg’s Patrik Laine, Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin, and a few others are making it close), this will mark the seventh time that Ovechkin has led the NHL in scoring. That would match Bobby Hull for the most NHL goal-scoring titles. Phil Esposito did it six times, while Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Charlie Conacher did it five times each. Ovechkin also has seven 50-goal seasons, with a shot at eight this year. Only Gretzky and Mike Bossy, with nine each, have more.

Ovechkin has a huge lead on all other goal-scorers from the time his NHL career began
in 2005–06 through yesterday. The numbers were fairly comparable for Bobby Hull from
the time he entered the NHL in 1957-58 through the 1971-72 season when he reached the
600-goal plateau. (Hull jumped to the WHA after that season.)

When Kelly Hrudy and Ron MacLean discussed this briefly prior to the outdoor game between Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals and the Toronto Maple Leafs in Annapolis last Saturday, they pointed out that at the age of 32, Ovechkin would be the oldest player to lead the NHL in goals since a 33-year-old Phil Esposito in 1974-75. Gordie Howe was also 33 when he led the NHL in 1962-63, as was Maurice Richard in 1954-55. Only 37-year-old Bill Cook, when he scored 28 goals in a 48-game season back in 1932-33, has led the NHL at a more advanced age. (Records have traditionally shown that Cook was “only” 36 … but genealogical sources reveal he was actually born in 1895, not 1896.)

Here’s a look at some of hockey greatest goal-scorers as they were approaching or just passing the 600-goal plateau. These numbers rank the top scorers during the times of the career for each player in question. For example, the statistics for Wayne Gretzky show the goal-scoring totals for players only from the seasons from the start of Gretzky’s career in 1979–80 through 1987-88 when he reached 583 goals. I think these numbers give pretty solid evidence that few players in NHL history have been as far ahead of the rest of the league during their time in the NHL as Ovechkin is today.

Wayne Gretzky scored 583 goals from his first NHL season in 1979-80 through 1987-88.
He had a pretty good lead on all other goal scorers during that period.

Gordie Howe also had a pretty good lead through 1964-65 on
the players who’d been active since his career began in 1946-47.

Maurice Richard retired with 544 goals in 1959-60. Only Gordie Howe was close
to him among the players who’d been active since Richard began in 1942-43.

Jaromir Jagr ranks third all-time with 766 goals, but when he topped 600 in 2006-07
there were six others who’d scored over 500 goals since he entered the NHL in 1990-91.

Brett Hull ranks fourth in NHL history with 741 goals. He
scored his first goal in 1986-87 and reached 600 in 1999-2000.

Marcel Dionne entered the NHL in 1971-72 and was approaching 600 goals through 1983-84. Dionne would up his total to 731 over the next five seasons. Guy Lafleur had also been a rookie in 1971-72,  but would soon begin a three-year retirement before making a comeback.

Phil Esposito scored 596 of his 717 career goals goals from 1963-64 through 1976-77
and had a pretty good lead at the time on some pretty big names from those years.

When he retired for the first time after the 1996-97 season, Mario Lemieux had scored
613 goals in just 745 games. Most of the other top scorers from that era had played
150+ more games than Lemieux had since his debut in 1984-85.

Was Mike Bossy the greatest scorer ever? When injuries forced him to retire in 1986-87,
he’d scored 573 goals in just 10 seasons. His career average of .762 goals per game
is the highest in NHL history among players with 200 goals or more.

Trade Deadline Day seems a perfect creation for 24-hour sports television and all-sports radio. In Canada, TSN first aired a one-hour trade deadline broadcast 20 years ago in 1998. It’s been giving a major commitment of time to the Trade Deadline since 2001. In our current age of social media, tracking trade rumors has become almost a full-time job for some reporters. Teams’ fears of losing a free agent for nothing help fuel speculation that big names may be on the move, although salary cap considerations can make star-powered trades difficult.

But, of course, the NHL Trade Deadline is much older than the Internet and salary caps. How much older? In a year in which the NHL has marked its 100th anniversary, deadline day dates back those full 100 years to February of 1918. In fact, the concept of a trade deadline in professional hockey is older than the NHL, dating back another 10 years to 1908.

The first season in Canada in which hockey teams could openly pay salaries to their players was 1906-07. There had certainly been some form of “under-the-table” payment prior to that season, and teams had been known to bring in “ringers” for Stanley Cup games for several years already. But with professionalism, teams openly buying the best talent before big games was giving hockey a bad name.  Something had to be done.

Pronouncements from the Stanley Cup Trustees, The Globe,
Toronto, March 2, 1908 and The Ottawa Journal, February 27, 1909.

In March of 1908, towards the end of the 1907-08 season, the trustees in charge of the Stanley Cup made an announcement. Beginning the following season, they would no longer consider any player eligible to play in a Stanley Cup challenge if they had appeared on more than one team during that season. Transactions in those days were usually more like  free agent signings than our modern concept of trades, but in a sense, the trustees established hockey’s first trade deadline as the day before the start of the 1908-09 season.

Despite the trustees’ announcement, Edmonton’s pro team loaded up with ringers for a Stanley Cup challenge against the Montreal Wanderers in December of 1908. Edmonton had won the championship of the Interprovincial Professional Hockey League (a three-team loop with clubs based in Alberta and Saskatchewan) in 1907-08, but – as was common in this era – their Stanley Cup challenge was put over until the start of the next season. Newspapers mocked Edmonton’s signing spree, but the Stanley Cup trustees realized that in a case like this – knowing that contracts in this era only bound a player to his team for one season –  it would be impossible and unreasonable to expect Edmonton to use all the same players from 1907-08. In fact, compelling the team to re-sign them all would give the players too much leverage in contract negotiations.

As a result, Edmonton’s ringers were allowed to play. The team lost anyway … and when new challenges for the Stanley Cup came in during the 1908-09 season, the trustees made it clear they would only allow players who’d been acquired by their teams prior to January 2, 1909 – the aforementioned start of the 1908-09 season.

Agreement between the NHA and the PCHA, The Winnipeg Tribune, September 5, 1913.

The trade deadline in hockey became more formalized before the 1913-14 season. By then, hockey had produced two major professional leagues that ranked above all others – the National Hockey Association (forerunner of the NHL) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. On September 4, 1913, the two leagues signed a deal to create a Hockey Commission to oversee the pro game. (A similar deal would later be reached with the Maritime Professional Hockey League, but that outfit was nearing its end.)

The NHA and PCHA agreed to arrange a postseason championship between their two leagues. The teams in both leagues were free to trade or purchase players, but no player acquired after February 15 could be used by his new club. This agreement was ratified by the two leagues in November, and the Stanley Cup trustees soon agreed that the Stanley Cup would be offered as the prize for the championship series.

Traded too late to be eligible, The Ottawa Journal, March 12, 1917 and February 27, 1918.

The NHA and the PCHA signed a new deal in the fall of 1916, which continued on after the NHL was formed in 1917. In this agreement, the trade deadline was moved to February 1. Players acquired after that date would be allowed to play in league games and playoffs with their new team, but they would not be eligible to compete in the inter-league series for the Stanley Cup. Hockey historians know the February 1 deadline was in force during the first NHL season because Toronto wasn’t permitted to use Rusty Crawford or Jack Adams (who’d both been acquired after February 1) in the 1918 Stanley Cup series with Vancouver. The same rule had made Reg Noble ineligible to play for the NHA’s Montreal Canadiens against Seattle in 1917.

Agreement between the NHL and PCHA, dated September 24, 1921.

In 1921, the NHL signed a new deal with the PCHA which moved the trade deadline back to February 15. That date was maintained when a new agreement was signed with the Western Canada Hockey League in 1925.

Agreement between the NHL and WCHL, dated June 12, 1925.

The collapse of pro hockey out west in 1926 left the NHL as the only league competing for the Stanley Cup in 1926-27. The first mention I could find in newspapers of an NHL-only “trading deadline” doesn’t appear until 1935, but nothing about that story gives any indication that this was a new rule. So it seems very likely that the NHL had continued to enforce a trade deadline as a way to prevent contending teams from loading up on star players from weaker teams before the playoffs.

Reports on the “trading deadline” in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
February 11, 1935 and Toronto’s Globe and Mail, February 16, 1939.

Stories about the “trading deadline” continue to appear during the 1940s and ’50s, and become more prominent in the 1960s. (The Maple Leafs’ big deal for Andy Bathgate in 1964, and Toronto’s trade of Frank Mahovlich in 1968, were both made just before the deadline.) Over the years, the date jumped around as seasons got longer, but it seems that Trade Deadline Day has been part of the NHL since the very beginning.

Well, Canada is still alive for a medal in men’s hockey after a 1-0 quarterfinal win over Finland. With Germany upsetting Sweden, the path to a gold medal matchup against either Russia or the Czechs is a little bit easier. And on the women’s side, it’ll be Canada against the USA tonight in what promises to be a great game for gold.

The history of hockey at the Olympics predates the first Winter Games, which began in Chamonix, France in 1924. The first Olympic hockey tournament was held as part of a Spring Sports Festival prior to the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.

Antwerp had bid to host the 1920 Olympics back in 1912, but no decision was reached before the outbreak of World War I. Shortly after the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the International Olympic Committee offered Antwerp the first choice to hold the Games in 1920 if the Belgians still wanted to do so. The move was seen as a way to honour the suffering of the Belgian people during the War. Belgium accepted.

Antwerp was still full of soldiers in 1920, but the city was mainly in tact. The scene was much different when the Winnipeg Falcons, many of them war veterans, were given a tour of the Belgian countryside. All pictures are courtesy of Brian Johannesson, whose father Konnie Johannesson played for the Falcons. For more stories and images visit WinnipegFalcons.com.

On December 16, 1919, the official program and schedule for the Antwerp Olympics was announced. The bulk of the competition was slated for mid July until late September, but events would kick off in April with a hockey tournament. (Figure skating, which had previously appeared as part of the 1908 London Olympics, would later be added to the spring schedule.)

Canada was represented at the 1920 Olympic hockey tournament by the Winnipeg Falcons, winners of the Allan Cup as the country’s senior amateur champions. The United States sent an amateur all-star team made up of players from Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Boston. A few of the Americans were born and raised in Canada, but they’d played in the States for several years and become citizens after serving in the U.S. Army.

National teams representing Belgium, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia were also at the Antwerp Olympics, but everyone knew the gold medal would be decided when Canada faced the United States. Due to the luck of the draw and an unusual tournament format, this occurred in a semifinal game on April 25, 1920.

The big game (as all the games were) was played at Antwerp’s Palais de Glace. It was a beautiful arena, but it hadn’t been built for hockey. The ice surface was only about 185 feet long and 59 feet wide. It was normally used for pleasure skating and it’s unclear whether or not the arena actually had seats. It did have tables and chairs, and could accommodate about 1,600 spectators – as well as an orchestra!

Canada versus the United States was going to be the greatest hockey game ever played in Europe, and it was a tough ticket. W.A. Hewitt (father of Foster) was the sports editor of the Toronto Star and an officer of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (among many other jobs). He served as the honorary manager of the Falcons in Belgium, and sent special reports on the games to the Winnipeg Free Press. “The game proved such an attraction,” wrote Hewitt of the Canada-U.S. matchup, “that the Palais de Glace tonight was unable to accommodate one-tenth the number of people who sought admission.

“The streets in the neighborhood of the rink were crowded from 6 o’clock, although the game was not advertised to start until 9 o’clock.  The doors were finally closed about an hour before the match…. Special squads of soldiers were employed to get the players into the rink … [and g]entlemen in evening clothes on the outside implored the players to allow them to carry their skates and sticks so that they could obtain admission.

“It would have been a great joke to his Winnipeg friends to have witnessed the entry of Monsieur Mike Goodman, escorted by a detachment of soldiers and three men in full evening dress and top hats, carrying his skates, stick and grip – and they all got way with it, too, as valets to ‘Monsieur le Canadienne.’”

For those who got inside, the night was definitely memorable. “No one will forget easily the Sunday evening at the Ice Palace where [Canada] battled against the United States,” reads a translation of a Belgian recap of the tournament. “A full house, agitated [and] feverish, so much the public was sensitive to the spectacle and the intelligence inspired by this show of force.”

This image of the 1920 Swiss Olympic team is typical of what the European hockey
teams looked like. They’re dressed more like soccer players than hockey players.
The goalie is wearing a shirt and tie under his white sweater.

“I have never seen anything like this sports competition,” wrote a reporter for a Swedish newspaper. “Every single player on the rink is a perfect acrobat on skates. They jump over sticks and players with ease and grace. They turn sharply with perfect ease and without losing speed. They skate backwards just as easily as forwards. The small puck was moved at an extraordinary speed around the rink. The players fought for it like seagulls that flutter after bread crusts from a boat. The players attacked each other with a roughness that would have knocked you into the next week.”

The American team was supported by a number of USA army officers and their friends, but the Canadians were the crowd favourite. Belgian fans were impressed by the way the Winnipeg Falcons had taken time to work with the European teams. “One of the customs our boys instituted was to coach and assist all our opponents,” Hewitt wrote. The Canadians took it easy on the Czechs in a 15-0 win in the quarterfinals, whereas the Americans ran up a 29–0 score over Switzerland. “We tried to limit ourselves to 14 or 15 goals against the European teams,” Falcons captain and future Hockey Hall of Famer Frank Fredrickson would later say. “Believe me, it was difficult!”

A recap of figure skating and hockey from the VIIth Olympiad in Antwerp in 1920.

The Americans were a strong team individually, but they weren’t a true team like the Falcons and that proved to be the difference in a 2–0 Canadian victory. “Their play was constantly more disciplined,” read the Belgian recap. “Never a single player looking for individual glory, these men, in their united action, playing their assigned and required places, never to the detriment of the overall play, a team success exceeding individual achievement.… These qualities ensured a brilliant triumph of Canada.”

The next night, Canada defeated Sweden to win the gold medal. The final score was 12–1. The only surprise was that the Swedes scored a goal. “They were without a doubt the best of the European teams,” Frank Fredrickson would say. “They were very friendly fellows and we liked them a lot. I guess it’s safe to say we gave it to them.”

In a very real way, the skill and sportsmanship the Winnipeg Falcons displayed in Antwerp in 1920 helped lay the foundation for the international game that hockey would become.

Quick trivia question for you. Which goalie holds the NHL record for lowest career average? No tricks. It’s not someone who played one career game and managed a shutout. Is it Georges Vezina? George Hainsworth? Terry Sawchuk? Jacques Plante?

Nope. It’s Alec Connell.

In 12 seasons between 1924 and 1937, Connell posted a career average of 1.91. He also set an NHL record with six straight shutouts during the 1927-28 season in a scoreless streak that stretched 460 minutes and 49 seconds. It’s true he only played 417 games in his career (a top goalie today would reach that number in about seven seasons) and that he played during the lowest-scoring era in hockey history with only limited forward passing for some of that time. Still, somebody has to be the lowest, and Alec Connell is it.

Tomorrow marks Connell’s birthday. (His given name was Alexander, with no apparent middle name, but whether he actually went by Alex or Alec is a whole other debate!) He’d be turning 118 years old. Probably. He might actually be turning 119. Or maybe only 116.

I know… You’ve heard these things from me before. Just recently, I wrote a little bit about Johnny Bower’s birthday mystery and I’ve written entire stories about the birth dates of Art Ross and King Clancy. But I hope you’ll indulge me one more time.

NHL records show that Alec Connell was born on February 8, 1902. That’s what the Hockey Hall of Fame has too. It’s what we had in the two editions of Total Hockey back in 1998 and 2000. I don’t have access to any of the earliest NHL Guides, but I think that’s a date we inherited from way back. My guess would be that at some point in the mid 1930s, when it seems the first efforts were being made to catalogue this type of information, Connell decided it might be advantageous to be a few years younger.

It’s said that Connell didn’t begin to play hockey until he was in the Canadian Army and training at Kingston, Ontario, during World War I. He couldn’t even skate, which seems odd for a boy of his era who grew up as part of an athletic family in Ottawa. Still, with his prowess at lacrosse it was thought he’d be a natural at hockey, and being a non-skater, who was also a catcher in baseball, goalie seemed the best position for him.

By 1920, Connell was back in Ottawa and would begin to put up impressive numbers with various teams in the amateur City League. In 1924, he turned pro with the Ottawa Senators and beat out Joe Ironstone (one of pro hockey’s first Jewish players) with an impressive training camp and a strong performance in two preseason games against the Calgary Tigers of the Western Canada Hockey League.

Alec Connell’s debut with the Senators on November 24, 1924 earned a note
in the sub-headline and a cute cartoon in the next day’s Ottawa Journal.

Young and skilled, no one probably cared much about Alec Connell’s age at that point … and if someone had asked him, he might not have been sure of it himself! One thing seems pretty obvious, though. He was NOT born in 1902.

Connell must have been born by 1901 because he appears in the Canadian Census that year as the youngest of seven children in an Irish Catholic family. His birthdate is listed as 8 Feb 1900 and his age as 1.

Ten years later, all seven Connell children are still living at home, but young Alex (as he’s listed) has aged 11 years and is now recorded as being born in 1899.

His War records are equally confusing. He has a medical history that seems to show he enlisted in 1917, so he may well have chosen to lie about his age.

Strangely, in an Attestation Paper apparently signed by him on October 7, 1918, (when he would have been of age) Connell’s date of birth is left blank.

But in another Attestation Paper dated May 9, 1919, (which actually seems to be about the time that he was demobilized from the army) his birth date is recorded as 1899 February 8.

(For those of you noting that his Trade or Calling is listed as “Chauffeur” and knowing that his nickname was “The Ottawa Fireman,” Connell didn’t actually join the Ottawa Fire Department until 1921. And he wasn’t really a fireman. He served for 29 years as Secretary to a succession of Ottawa Fire Chiefs.)

So, was Alec Connell born in 1899 or 1900? The best evidence points to 1900, although this birth certificate wasn’t actually filled out by his mother until 1919:

Most convincing is the record of his baptism at St. Brigid’s parish in Ottawa, which occurred on February 12, 1900:

Although it’s a little bit difficult to read, it says that Alexander Connell is the legitimate son of James Connell and Sarah Courneen, and that he was “born on the eighth inst.” Inst in this case being an abbreviation for the Latin instante mense, meaning a date of the current month.

So, happy 118th birthday Mr. Connell. And do you prefer Alec or Alex?

I’ve been writing (and talking) about Johnny Bower a lot about lately. I wasn’t planning to do it again this week, but I’ve been pretty interested (some might say obsessed!) with certain aspects of Bower’s early hockey career and how it’s tied up with his unusual military career. So this story is something of a sequel to my piece Before He Was Bower, which I posted on December 28.

In his 2006 autobiography The China Wall, which Johnny Bower wrote with longtime hockey writer Bob Duff, Bower says that when he was playing hockey as a boy in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, there was an army reserve unit in town. “A lot of us kids from the hockey team used to go every Friday night. We had uniforms and they trained us. It was good fun.” Bower says that, “when the war broke out, I was 15 and most of the guys joined up.”

Johnny Bower was still Johnnie Kiszkan when he played wartime hockey in Vernon,
British Columbia. The newspaper clipping is from the Regina Leader-Post on
March 4, 1943. The playoff recap is from Ice Hockey Wiki.

With a birth date of November 8, 1924 (when he was born John Kiszkan), Bower would still have been 14 when World War II began in September of 1939. Perhaps he waited a few months to enlist. Most of his Prince Albert buddies were sent to Vernon, British Columbia for training – but Bower was held back for a few months “because one of the generals found out how young I was.”

Bower was eventually sent to British Columbia for further training, but “they found out when I was in Vernon that I was too young, so I was stationed there for two years.” He may actually have been there for closer to three years.

Tom Hawthorn, a veteran reporter who lives in Victoria, B.C., recently had a great story about Johnny Bower in an online British Columbia news magazine called The Tyee. It includes an account of Kiszkan/Bower playing goal for the Vernon Military All-Stars during the winter of 1942-43. Hawthorn relates that Bower led his team to the British Columbia intermediate provincial championship, followed by victory over the Saskatchewan champion Notre Dame Hounds before losing the Western Canadian title to the Calgary Buffaloes in mid-March of 1943.

Johnny Kiszkan/Bower sits in the middle of this team photo of the Prince Albert M&C Warhawks, between two of the three trophies he helped the team win in 1943-44.

Sixty years later, in a 2003 interview (much of which appeared recently as a lengthy obituary in The Globe and Mail) Bower told Regina sportswriter and historian John Chaput that, “I went overseas around 1943 and I was going to play hockey at one of the camps, but when I arrived I found that Turk Broda and pretty well all the pros that played for the Maple Leafs were on this hockey team, so I turned around.”

This appears to make it impossible for Bower to have had the near-miss at Dieppe due to illness in 1942 that I wrote about in December, and which he himself discussed in The China Wall. Still, much of Bower’s overseas experience in 1943 was spent in hospitals as he battled rheumatoid arthritis. By January of 1944, he was back in Saskatchewan and would soon be out of the army. Bower returned to Regina, got a discharge, and went to Saskatoon. He writes that he then went back to Prince Albert, “and got a job on the railroad.”

At this point, virtually all hockey sources – and Bower himself – have him returning to the game as a Junior with the Prince Albert Black Hawks for the 1944-45 season. But as I more-or-less stumbled across in my December story, Bower/Kiszkan had returned to the ice almost as soon as he got home. I contacted John Chaput about this and he agreed to go through the Prince Albert Daily Herald on microfilm at the Provincial Archives in Regina for the winter of 1943-44. Here’s what we’ve found.

A closer look at a young Johnny Kiszkan/Bower from the M&C team photo.

There was a four-team Prince Albert City League in 1943-44. They played a six-team double-round robin schedule. Bower/Kiszkan wasn’t a part of the league, but did play on a Prince Albert All-Star team in an exhibition game against the Saskatchewan RCAF Tech Aeronauts on January 22, 1944. In hyping the game on January 19, the Prince Albert newspaper noted: “An added attraction will be Pte. Johnnie Kiszkan, late of the Prince Albert Black Hawks and Victoria [likely Vernon] Army, who will be netminder for the All-Stars. Johnnie recently returned home from action overseas.” Perhaps he’d already been playing hockey in Regina or Saskatoon, as Johnnie and the All-Stars won the game 6-3.

The Prince Albert M & C Repair Depot team — sponsored by the M & C Aviation Company and known as the Warhawks — finished in first place in the City League standings. Kiszkan/Bower didn’t play for any team that season, but the Warhawks were also the only Intermediate hockey team in Northern Saskatchewan, and they added Johnnie Kiszkan to their roster for the playoffs against the Southern champions:

Feb. 25/44: Notre Dame Hounds 2 at M&C 5
Feb 27/44: M&C 4 at Notre Dame 0
(M&C wins total-goal series 9-2 and wins Henderson Cup as Saskatchewan intermediate champions.)

He remained with the team to face the Alberta Champions too:

March 17: Canmore Briquetters 2 at M&C 3
March 18: Canmore 1 at M&C 4
(M&C wins best-of-three series 2-0 and Edmonton Journal Cup as Western intermediate champs.)

Kiszkan/Bower played two more games that year, on March 30 and April 1 when the M&C Aviation Warhawks defeated Prince Albert Army 5-2 and 2-0 to win the Quinn Cup as Prince Albert City champions.

A closeup look at the team plaque on the Henderson Cup from 1943-44. (Thank
you to Brock Gerrard, Curator of the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in Regina.)

“It’s only a few games, and against diluted wartime competition,” says John Chaput, “but the goals-against average is pretty gaudy; 1.43 overall, 1.17 if you exclude the exhibition, 1.25 for the four games that really matter…. There are no quotes in any of the stories and the game descriptions are rather general, but the one thing about Kiszkan/Bower that is evident is [his style]. Against Notre Dame, “Kiszkan displayed some remarkable footwork in warding off the attacks of the determined Hounds.” Against Canmore: “Much credit for the win goes to Kiszkan for kicking out a good many ‘labelled’ shots.”

The poke check would come later!

On this day in history 100 years ago, on January 9, 1918, just three weeks into its inaugural season, the NHL made an important rule change. It would now allow goalies to leave their feet and fall to the ice to make a save. This rule change was the focus of a story I wrote last month for the New York Times. It’s also in a story I wrote three years ago for this web site.

To make the New York Times story different, I sought out several NHL goaltenders past and present to speak with. This gave me my first opportunity to talk with “Mr. Goalie” Glenn Hall … and what would sadly turn out to be my last chance to speak with Johnny Bower.

Paintings by Darrin Egan. Visit him on Facebook.

I spoke to Johnny Bower on October 17. It was a couple of weeks before his 93rd birthday. He answered the phone, but for the first time (and admittedly, I’ve only spoken to him a few times before), he sounded old. I explained that I would like to ask him a few questions, and he told me he really didn’t like to do interviews anymore. He wasn’t sure he still had the memory for it. I said I’d ask him one question, and if he didn’t feel he could answer, we didn’t have to continue. I asked him my question, and one thing quickly led to another. No problem with his memory that I could detect!

As noted in my Times story, Bower told me he was unaware there had originally been a rule requiring goalies to remain standing. He also told me it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference to his decision to become a goalie. “No one really flopped down,” he said. “As a child, I would stand up, I was scared. No one had to say anything to me.”

But, of course, there would be occasions when he had to drop to the ice to make a save. “My dad said, ‘you fall to much.’ I said ‘Dad, you don’t know hockey. I have to do what I have to do.’ It turned out just great.” Bower told me he always considered himself a standup goaltender, “but the poke check was a big plus.”

This announcement  was made by NHL president Frank Calder from his office
in Montreal on January 9, 1918. (From the Ottawa Journal, January 10, 1918.)

The poke check, often diving head first (without a mask!) toward an on-rushing opponent, became Bower’s signature move.  As Leafs president Brendan Shanahan told reporters shortly after Bower’s death on Boxing Day: “Not too many people in sports have a name where it almost becomes a verb. If you were playing street hockey and you poke-checked somebody, you’d yell, ‘Johnny Bower. I just Johnny Bowered you.’”

Like Johnny Bower, Glenn Hall regarded himself as a standup goaltender, even though he’s considered the pioneer of the butterfly style. Spreading his legs wide to block the bottom of the net was merely an extension of his natural style. “I always played in a deep crouch,” he explained. “[Terry] Sawchuk did too. But I looked at the other goalkeepers who were just a little before me; Chuck Rayner and Sugar Jim Henry were two of my favourites. Both were standup.”

Hall told me that when he was playing junior hockey in the Red Wings farm system in Windsor, Ontario, he would go to Detroit to watch NHL games. “That’s when I saw those guys … but I never saw a goalkeeper I didn’t like. You didn’t steal from them exactly, but you noticed what they were doing and if it was getting results or making things more difficult.”

Contact Darrin at: inthebluepaint@gmail.com

Hall was aware of the old rule about goalies standing. “I think at one time I knew that,” he said. But even long after the rule had changed, coaches in his era weren’t exactly progressive in their thinking. “They had a few silly rules. Coaches would holler, ‘Stand up. Don’t touch the puck unless it’s going in the net.’ So many stupid things.”

There were no specialized goalie coaches in Glenn Hall’s time. The men behind the bench were usually ex-forwards or defensemen. “You never thought of the coaches,” he said. “They didn’t know anything about playing goal.” Former Boston Bruins goaltending great Tiny Thompson was a Black Hawks scout when Hall got to Chicago. “I liked to talk to him, but he never offered any hockey advice. Nor did I ask him.”

I asked Hall who was the best goalie he ever saw. “I never played against anyone I thought was better than me,” he said with a smile in his voice. But he did admit that, “Sawchuk, in his first four years, was unbelievable.” He also loved Gump Worsley and Johnny Bower. “Both were great goalies.” (Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until we were done that I hadn’t asked him about Jacques Plante.)

Clint Benedict’s habit of accidentally falling to the ice is often credited with changing
the NHL rule about goalies, but Art Ross had spoken in favour of the change prior to
the start of the first NHL season. (From the Ottawa Journal, December 17, 1917.)

More recently, Martin Brodeur was someone Hall admired, but he had trouble relating to Dominik Hasek. “Hasek was different,” he said. “I wasn’t watching a lot of hockey then, but I hated to guess and a lot of Hasek’s moves looked like guess-type moves. He must have known what he was doing, but I would have had trouble playing like that.”

So would Mr. Goalie – a man who has a reputation for being sick to his stomach before nearly every game he played – still have wanted to be a goalie if the rules had required him to remain standing?

“Yes, of course! I didn’t start playing goal until I was about 10 or 11, but I found out it was the most interesting spot to play. That’s where all the action was. That’s what made it enjoyable. That’s where things were happening.”

Leafs legend Johnny Bower passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93. Much has already been said and written about him, most of it conveying that as great a goalie as he was, Bower was an even better person. My personal experiences with him were few, but any time I had the opportunity to speak with him, it was always special.

Bower’s exact age had long been something of a mystery. As a young boy, he lied about his age to join the Canadian Army in World Word II. (Many stories say he was only 15 at the time, others say 16). During his career, he enjoyed playing along with the guessing game, but in recent years it was determined that he was (probably!) born on November 8, 1924. His name at the time was John Kiszkan.

A respiratory infection in 1942 likely saved Bower/Kiszkan’s life when he had to be hospitalized instead of being sent to France for the disastrous Dieppe Raid. After being discharged due to rheumatoid arthritis in his hands in 1943, Kiszkan returned to his home town of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where he quickly resumed his hockey career. He played for the Prince Albert M and C Warhawks and helped them win the Western Canada Intermediate hockey championship at the end of the winter in 1944.

The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix of February 26, 1944, reports on Prince Albert’s 5-2 victory
over the Notre Dame Hounds to open the Intermediate Provincial championship.

Stories on Prince Albert’s two-game sweep of the Western Canada title
are from The Lethbridge Herald on March 18 and 20, 1944.

In the fall of 1944, John Kiszkan had a professional tryout with the Cleveland Barons of the American Hockey League. He didn’t catch on, returning once again to Prince Albert where he played Junior hockey. His Prince Albert Black Hawks won the North Saskatchewan championship in 1945 but lost the Provincial title to the Moose Jaw Canucks of the Southern Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.

Cleveland Barons story from the New Philadelphia (Ohio) Daily Times on September 29. 1944. The Saskatchewan Junior story is from The Lethbridge Herald on March 9, 1945.

The next season, 1945-46, Kiszkan began his lengthy minor league apprenticeship in Cleveland that would eventually lead to his great success in Toronto.

From the Athens (Ohio) Messenger on December 28, 1945.

A year later, John Kiszkan (whose last name had often been misspelled in newspapers, and must have been mispronounced by broadcasters as well) decided that his surname was just too difficult for the sports media. Bob Duff, co-author The China Wall: The Timeless Legend of Johnny Bower, told me that Johnny’s parents had separated by then, and when he turned 21, Johnny had his sister Rose, who worked in a legal office, help him change his name to Bower. It was their mother’s maiden name.

The Cleveland Barons were training in the Manitoba Capital when
this story appeared in the Winnipeg Tribune on September 24, 1946.

His name appeared as John (Kiszkan) Bower in many newspapers throughout the 1946-47 season with Cleveland … but he would be Johnny Bower for ever after.